


Click Me (a match of a lifetime)

by LeapAngstily



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Band Aid Relationship, First Dates, Hook-Up, M/M, Tinder, Unsolicited friendly intervention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 08:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5040664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeapAngstily/pseuds/LeapAngstily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mattia needs to get laid (or at least that’s what Mario says). Riccardo is too busy with work to get back into the dating circuit (or at least that’s what he says). Until today, neither of them knew what Tinder was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Click Me (a match of a lifetime)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunasenzanotte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/gifts).



> Blame [lunasenzanotte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte) for this! I take absolutely no responsibility whatsoever! To me Mattia is a sweet little puppy and I’d never write him as anything other than that on my own. My only mistake was to post a fic meme on Tumblr and here we are: DeS/Monto, meeting online AU. I hate you, Maria! ~~Which obviously means I love you, just so you know.~~
> 
> No more fic memes for now, but if you feel like making my life harder, please do [drop me a request](http://thousand-and-one-montos.tumblr.com/ask) on Tumblr!
> 
> I realized today’s Mattia’s birthday only after finishing this late last night, but anyways, congratulations to my 23-year-old puppy!

“You need to get laid.”  
  
Mattia actually stops wiping the spilled beer off his floor in order to stare at Mario incredulously. “No, I don’t.”  
  
“Do too,” Mario argues, bouncing up and down on Mattia’s bed, almost spilling his beer the second time. “You’ve been buried under your calculus books since the beginning of the semester, and I’ve barely heard you laugh since then either. When was the last time you so much as  _touched_  another person?”  
  
“Not everything’s about sex!” Mattia huffs and smacks Mario’s calf with maybe more force than necessary, before he stands up and throws the used paper towels into the waste basket.  
  
Mario raises his eyebrows sceptically before looking pointedly towards Mattia’s nightstand. Figures Mario would know about the porn magazines stashed there – technically they’re not even Mattia’s, for fuck’s sake! What was he supposed to do when his parents decided they needed to have  _the talk_  again after he came out to them at 21?  
  
“I don’t even know any interesting gay guys. How on earth am I supposed to get laid when I don’t even have anyone to date?” Mattia grumbles when Mario opts not to answer him in words, sitting down on his old computer chair and picking up his own half empty beer bottle from the desk.  
  
“Who said anything about dating? You’re a cute guy – can’t you just hook up in a club or something?”  
  
“Easy for you to say…” Mattia mumbles and sips his drink angrily. He’s never been much of a party-goer, definitely not like Mario, and the mere thought of going to a gay bar and picking up some random stranger to have sex with makes his skin crawl.  
  
“Stephan’s still single, isn’t he?” Mario suggests nonchalantly. “I never understood why you guys broke up in the first place.”  
  
“Do we need a reason?” There really hadn’t been one; they had merely realized that being the only openly gay boys in their high school wasn’t good enough reason to stay together. Mario had probably been the one most upset about their break-up even when it happened.  
  
“Well, you could always try online dating.” Mario’s face lights up as he obviously comes up with an idea. “Gimme your phone! You’re going on Tinder!”  
  
Mattia has no time to argue as Mario snatches his iPhone, hitting in Mattia’s security code like it was public knowledge. The new app is on Mattia’s phone before he fully realizes what is happening.  
  
“Done! Now we only need to get the settings right,” Mario is beaming at him so happily that Mattia has no heart to tell him he has no intention of using whatever online dating app he just downloaded. He’s never been able to say no to Mario outright, and this time is no different – Mario will grow bored of the topic soon enough, anyways, and then Mattia can easily get rid of his newest dating profile.  
  
“Looking for men in the area— what age? Eighteen to twenty-five sound good to you?”  
  
“Yeah, whatever,” Mattia agrees with a shrug, not really paying much attention to Mario anymore. His bottle is empty and so is the 8-pack they’d bought for the night. Mattia’s dad would probably have wine or even whiskey downstairs, but Mattia decides against asking him – he’d rather not risk getting another lecture on safe sex before heading out.  
  
“Let’s get going, the party’s probably started already.” Mattia holds out his hand until Mario reluctantly returns the phone to him. The application is now showing a photo of some guy he vaguely remembers seeing at campus. Mattia discards the suggestion without a second thought.  
  
  
  
  
  
“You need to get laid.”  
  
Riccardo scoffs at the mere suggestion, tossing another graded paper into the ever-growing pile on the upper left corner of his desk.  
  
“I’m being serious,” Gigi insists from the other side of the desk, where he has been sitting for at least fifteen minutes now. “It’s 10 pm on a Friday night and you’re sitting here  _grading papers_. That’s not how a 30-year-old single guy’s supposed to spend his weekends!”  
  
“I need to get this done at some point anyways,” Riccardo snaps back, stabbing his pen through the paper he just started grading. He groans in frustration when he realizes the damage he just made. “I’d rather not waste my time on these stupid assignments next week when I have much more important things to do.”  
  
“You do realize no one’s expecting you to spend every waking hour working on your PhD, right? Especially not when you’ve got classes to teach too,” Gigi comments casually and then picks up Riccardo’s phone from the desk. “What’s your code? I wanna play Candy Crush.”  
  
Riccardo recites his security code absentmindedly before he realizes Gigi should have his own phone with him as well. “Why don’t you use your own phone?”  
  
“I’m stuck on this one stupid level,” Gigi replies without looking up from the screen. “And I’m only helping you along, anyways, since you obviously suck at this game.”  
  
“I wouldn’t even have that game if it wasn’t for you…” Riccardo mumbles as he returns to the paper he manhandled earlier. He can’t make out the word on the ripped part, but considering all the other mistakes littering the German text, he decides it doesn’t really matter even if that one specific word had been correct.  
  
Gigi stays alarmingly quiet for a long time, happily fiddling with Riccardo’s phone. Riccardo pays him no mind at first, more than content to finish his work in peace. After a while, however, he starts getting suspicious because Gigi is never quiet for long, especially not when he has a chance to interfere with Riccardo’s work.  
  
“What’re you doing?” Riccardo asks sharply when he realizes Gigi’s definitely not playing Candy Crush anymore.  
  
“I’m playing cupid, of course.” Gigi has a self-satisfied smirk on his face as he shows Riccardo the application that looks vaguely like Facebook. “You’ve got three matches already. I told you that new profile pic looked  _delicious_.”  
  
“Give it back!” Riccardo makes an unsuccessful attempt to grab his phone from Gigi’s hands. “I’ve told you I’m not interested in meeting anyone! And online dating, seriously? What if one of my students sees it?”  
  
“It’s just Tinder; it’s not big deal, everyone uses it. And what does it matter what your students think? We’re all adults here, there’s no need to baby them.” Gigi is writing something now, and Riccardo uses his distraction to his advantage and snatches the phone from his hands.  
  
Riccardo closes the app and is in the process of deleting the blasted thing when Gigi opens his big mouth again, “It’s been three months, Ricky. Isn’t it about time you got over Andrea? He left you and he’s not coming back no matter how long you wait.”  
  
Riccardo’s phone is asking if he’s certain he wants to delete Tinder, and suddenly he’s not quite so sure anymore.  
  
  
  
  
  
Mattia hates student parties.  
  
He always forgets the fact when he gets invited, and more often than not actually looks forward to the event, only to realize he’d much rather be home once he actually joins the party.  
  
“I’m gay,” he bluntly tells a girl that’s trying to chat him up, and then sinks into an unoccupied armchair as soon as she disappears from his side. He idly wonders if he should get a shirt with ‘GAY’ printed on with bright colours – that way he’d at least avoid all the awkward flirting attempts from girls.  
  
Mario has disappeared somewhere, which doesn’t surprised Mattia at all. Mario knows most of the people in the house anyways, and even if he didn’t, he’d make new friends soon enough, unlike Mattia who’s always been ridiculously bad at meeting new people.  
  
Mattia pulls out his phone, mostly to create an illusion that he’s doing something instead of just generally avoiding human contact. Tinder is still running when the screen lights up and for a moment Mattia considers leaving the party and finding someone else to spend his night with.  
  
Hell, what does he have to lose? Mattia starts swiping through the suggested profiles, discarding most of the guys without looking further than the first picture, giving a closer look only to a few – most of them people he recognizes from one place or another.  
  
Far too soon for his liking, Mattia runs out of profiles to look at. Either the campus area lacks gay students, or Tinder just isn’t the ideal place to look for non-straight people. Mattia fiddles with the application some more, opening the settings and adjusting the search radius. After a moment of hesitation, he also changes the age range – it’s not something he’d ever tell Mario, but he’s never been that into guys their own age.  
  
Someone pushes a shot into his hand and Mattia downs it without a second thought. Might as well get drunk if he’s going to spend the whole night on Tinder, feeling sorry for himself.  
  
He’s only half paying attention to the profiles now, liking or discarding anyone based only on the first impression. Another drink appears in his hand – Mattia is pretty sure this one came from Mario – and his mind is starting to buzz pleasantly.  
  
Maybe this won’t be such a bad night, after all.  
  
Suddenly his phone chimes happily, the sound annoyingly loud to his ears:  _You’ve got a match!_  
  
Mattia stares at the screen, unblinking, for what feels like an eternity. His eyes are hurting and he can’t actually see the photo or the name of his first ever Tinder match, but the fact there is one is a revelation in itself. Finally, he blinks his eyes forcefully and tries to focus his gaze.  
  
 _You and Riccardo have liked each other._  
  
Mattia vaguely remembers liking the picture of a blue-eyed man biting the inside of his lip, half-hiding his smile behind a foreign book. He’s not exactly Mattia’s type, at least judging from the photo, but he’s definitely interesting enough to warrant a second look. And much older than him, Mattia notes when he checks the age – this ‘Riccardo’ is apparently 30, even if he definitely doesn’t look it.  
  
They’re also less than a kilometre from each other, which must mean Riccardo is also at the campus or at least very close-by.  
  
Mattia gets up and goes fetch himself another drink, before turning his attention back to the phone. He’s halfway done with his drink before he has the courage to actually open the instant messaging and type in a short message.  
  
 _“Hi. Where r u?”_  
  
  
  
  
  
“It’s just a kid!” Riccardo lets out a frustrated laugh and waves his phone at Gigi. “You matched me up with a fucking teenager!”  
  
“Can’t be, your age range starts from twenty,” Gigi deadpans before waving at the bartender to order another whiskey shot for Riccardo. “Is he cute, at least? I bet he is – my taste’s impeccable!”  
  
“Sure, I guess,” Riccardo mumbles as he looks through the profile of this ‘Mattia’. A student, apparently. 22 years old, even if he looks much younger in Riccardo’s opinion. Cute, just like Gigi said. “Not my type in the least, though.”  
  
Still, at least he seems much more appropriate than all the other matches Gigi’s just-like-every-single-one-of-them approach has given him so far.  
  
“That’s no surprise, considering your type’s old and hairy.”  
  
“Shut up,” Riccardo grumbles and gulps down the shot in one go as soon as the bartender hands him the glass. He’s still too sober to have this conversation with Gigi – actually, Riccardo is fairly sure he’s going to pass out long before he’s drunk enough to discuss his break-up with Gigi. Or with anyone, for that matter.  
  
His phone chimes for a new message. “He’s asking where I am.”  
  
“Tell him,” Gigi urges him on with a wide smile. “Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky.”  
  
“Like a kid like that’d know what to do with it…” Riccardo mutters to himself even as he types out an answer.  
  
Gigi barks out a laugh at the comment, reaching out for Riccardo over the table and pinching his cheek affectionately. “Trust me, he’ll make it up with enthusiasm. Kids always do.”  
  
“God, you’re making it sound like I’m robbing the cradle,” Riccardo retorts exasperatedly as he pushes Gigi’s hand off his face. “When was the last time I told you I hate you?”  
  
“That’d be half an hour ago when we left the campus,” Gigi answers helpfully.  
  
Riccardo’s phone chimes for another message:  _“Wanna hook up?”_  
  
Riccardo wonders if he could claim self defence for strangling Gigi in his sleep.  
  
  
  
  
  
Mattia has never been to the pub Riccardo had asked to meet him, despite its location only a couple blocks away from the faculty of economics.  
  
It is a small lounge style place, usually inhabited by humanities students – the faculty of humanities is also close-by – and Mattia has heard it’s also fairly popular among the queer folk but, having no one to go with, he never bothered to find out more.  
  
The place is surprisingly empty for a Friday night, only a few groups of friends sitting around the corner tables. No one pays Mattia any mind as he slips inside quietly and looks around the place in hopes of finding his ‘match’ before Riccardo sees him. That way, maybe he can still escape before he does anything stupid.  
  
The outside air has sobered Mattia up considerably, and the idiocy of his actions is finally starting to sink in. He had left the party without so much as letting Mario know where he was going, to meet up ( _hook up_ , his mind corrects helpfully) with someone he met on  _Tinder_. Everything about this idea has ‘disaster’ written all over it.  
  
Mattia is about to turn and leave when he spots Riccardo leaning on the bar, talking to the bartender casually, obviously a regular customer. He’s wearing jeans and a dark blue button-up shirt, a heavy-looking messenger bag hanging off his shoulder. He pushes a strand of hair behind his ear and chuckles at something the bartender says. His nose looks slightly hooked.  
  
He looks  _normal_ , which for some reason surprises Mattia – he had expected, maybe half unconsciously, to find someone more flashy, someone more stereotypically  _gay_. The moment he realizes this, Mattia feels ashamed of himself.  
  
“Riccardo?” Mattia swallows his nervousness and walks over to the bar, addressing the man carefully.  
  
Mario was right, Mattia needs to try and get to know new people – that’s the only way if he ever wants to meet someone he’d genuinely want to be with.  
  
Riccardo meets his eyes squarely, but his smile is a bit nervous when he returns Mattia’s greeting, “Hi, you must be Mattia.”  
  
Riccardo makes no attempt to invade Mattia’s personal space – no hug, no kiss, not even a handshake – and Mattia feels himself relaxing immediately when he realizes this must be a new situation for both of them.  
  
“You want something to drink? My treat, since you had to come all the way here on my request,” Riccardo offers with a casual wave towards the bartender.  
  
Mattia sees no point in revealing he’d actually been only a five-minute walk away from the pub. “A beer would be nice, thanks.”  
  
Riccardo’s smile seems a bit more genuine when he orders Mattia’s beer and a glass of wine for himself, before telling the bartender to “put it on Gigi’s tab.”  
  
  
  
  
  
To Riccardo’s surprise, it is only two hours later, at closing time, that they leave the bar with Mattia. In his head, the ‘Tinder hook up’ had had only two possible outcomes: casual sex right away or just an awkward meeting followed by them going their separate ways.  
  
What he definitely hadn’t expected was the two of them getting drunk together and actually getting to know each other. Granted, they had mostly talked about Mattia’s studies in the economics department and the horrors of Riccardo’s work in German linguistics, but Riccardo also now knows Mattia had only started using Tinder because of his friend Mario, while Mattia found out it wasn’t actually Riccardo who had liked his profile.  
  
And Mattia is still damn cute, despite being at least ten years too young and definitely not Riccardo’s type.  
  
Riccardo might be a bit drunk, he realizes belatedly as he leans on Mattia’s shoulder for balance. The thought makes him giggle out loud – not ‘a bit’, a _lot_. Maybe that last glass of wine had been too much.  
  
“Your lips are all black,” Mattia tells him matter-of-factly, his low voice a pleasant hum in Riccardo’s ears – no kid should be allowed to have a voice like that – and he laughs at Riccardo when he tries to wipe the red wine stains off his lips.  
  
Mental note, stick to white wine on first dates.  
  
Except then Mattia’s lips are pressed on his, and maybe the red wine wasn’t such a bad idea after all?  
  
Mattia isn’t particularly good kisser, but that could be chalked up to the alcohol as much as inexperience, and frankly, Riccardo isn’t at his best either. It doesn’t stop the kiss from dragging on, clumsy lips meshing together, searching for the right rhythm through trial and error, until they finally find it, the kiss deepening, and Riccardo is having hard time remembering why this was supposed to be a bad idea.  
  
Mattia is taller than him, if only a few centimetres, and Riccardo quite likes the change – with Andrea he always had to crouch.  
  
“So, your place or mine?” Riccardo breaks the kiss to ask the question. It’s mostly to force his ex out of his mind, but he definitely wouldn’t say no to getting laid either.  
  
Mattia is looking at Riccardo with droopy eyes, his mouth still slightly parted, his lips shining with saliva (probably Riccardo’s). For a second, Riccardo thinks he needs to repeat the question, but then Mattia answers shortly, “Yours, please?”  
  
“As you wish,” Riccardo whispers against Mattia’s lips before he draws them into another kiss.  
  
They make out some ten minutes longer before either of them even begins to think about moving from their spot on the sidewalk in front of the now closed pub.  
  
  
  
  
  
“I can’t believe you actually did it!” Mario is jumping up and down on Mattia’s bed again, no sign of a hangover despite his obviously inebriated state the night before. Mattia, on the other hand, just groans and tries to hide under his blankets – Mario’s bouncing is making him feel sick.  
  
“How was it? Did he do you or—?”  
  
Mattia manages to interrupt the question by throwing his pillow in Mario’s general direction, probably missing by a mile, but judging from Mario’s silence the message came across clear enough.  
  
“Don’t be like that, Mattia,” Mario whines after a moment of silence. He has thankfully stopped bouncing. “I’m your bestest best friend ever. When have I ever  _not_  told you about my conquests?”  
  
“Don’t call him that,” Mattia snaps before he can stop himself, and then he hides his blushing face by ducking his head under the covers again. The light from the window is hurting his eyes and his mouth tastes like cat’s piss. He can’t remember when the last time he had a hangover this bad was.  
  
“Man, I thought getting laid was supposed to make you feel better.”  
  
“I’m feeling amazing, see?” Mattia peeks out from under the covers and forces his fakest smile on his face to show Mario just how  _happy_  he’s feeling. “Can you just leave me alone now? My head hurts…”  
  
“Just tell me what happened – you left me alone at that party and didn’t even bother to answer your phone. I think I deserve a few juicy details.” Mario has a point. Kind of. At least according to Mario logic.  
  
“I topped. It was good.” Mattia considers his words for a few seconds but then decides he’s too hungover to care about things like tact. It’s not like he’s going to meet Riccardo again. “Well, it was good until it was over and he started crying and told me to leave. Kinda killed the mood, you know.”  
  
“…Wow. You were that bad?”  
  
Mattia throws another pillow at Mario’s head and dives under the covers again, determined not to come out before his infernal headache lets up.  
  
“But you really liked him, huh?” Mario’s words sound more like a statement than a question, so Mattia doesn’t bother answering. “I mean, you still got laid, right? You wouldn’t be so upset over what happened after if you weren’t hoping to see him again.”  
  
Mattia sticks his hand out and flips Mario off.  
  
Privately, he wonders why Mario, who’s never shown any skill at reading people, had to pick this particular moment to be so damn right.  
  
  
  
  
  
Riccardo is drawling on about bilingualism to a first year class of German majors, not even pretending to be interested in the topic despite it being the subject of his own PhD research.  
  
These kids are all around Mattia’s age – most of them a few years younger, his brain corrects automatically – and Riccardo keeps imagining he sees Mattia among the students.  
  
And then he feels like an ass, because who on earth would treat a mere boy like he did?  
  
There’s still ten minutes until the lecture is supposed to end, but Riccardo only hands out the new homework assignments and lets the students leave, because he simply can’t concentrate no matter how much he tries.  
  
It’s been almost a week, for fuck’s sake! Isn’t drinker’s remorse supposed to wear off along with the hangover?  
  
The students trickle out of the lecture hall slowly, leaving only one boy standing behind the seat rows. Riccardo finally realizes that this time he isn’t just imagining Mattia – he really is there.  
  
“Good lecture,” Mattia comments dryly, walking down towards Riccardo in what’s probably intended to be a confident strut. “Not that I understood a word you said, of course. My German’s a bit rusty.”  
  
“You’re lucky, then. It was rubbish,” Riccardo retorts with an uncomfortable half-grin, busying himself with packing his bag. “What’re you doing here? I thought you economics folks were too good for our measly faculty.”  
  
“I wanted to see you, you ass,” Mattia replies far too honestly for Riccardo’s liking. So much for avoiding the elephant in the room, then.  
  
“I figured as much. But why? I was an ass, as you so accurately noticed.”  
  
“Because aside from that last ten minutes, I actually enjoyed your company. A lot. And I was hoping we could meet up again sometime?” Mattia may have started the admission confidently, but by the time he gets to the end, he is blushing furiously, obviously not used to asking anyone out, let alone someone he’s already fucked.  
  
Riccardo considers his options. On one hand, Mattia is still not his type, not to mention he’s only a student, almost eight years younger than Riccardo; but on the other, for the past week Riccardo’s been too preoccupied with his thoughts about Mattia to even pine over Andrea, which has got to be a good sign.  
  
“I’m coming out of a pretty bad break-up,” he finally admits, meeting Mattia’s eyes reluctantly. It’s no excuse for his actions, of course, but Mattia at least deserves to know why Riccardo had freaked out the way he did. “It’s gonna take a while before I’m even remotely over it. I’ll probably start crying on you again at some point too. But if you’re willing to risk that…” He trails off to wait for Mattia’s reaction.  
  
“It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.” Mattia shrugs nonchalantly, but there’s a small smile tugging at his lips. “Mario’s informed me marrying my calculus books isn’t an option, either.”  
  
“So it’s me or calculus? Damn, I feel so wanted.”  
  
“Shut up, at least I’m not crying on you.”  
  
“Point taken.”  
  
Mattia’s gaze flickers down momentarily, focusing at Riccardo’s lips, and then he quickly looks up again, the blush on his cheeks deepening. Damn, he’s cute.  
  
Riccardo leans in and pecks his lips gently, before he flings his messenger bag over his shoulder and heads for the door. “C’mon, I’ll treat you to lunch. It’s the least I can do after you had to suffer through my horrible lecture.”  
  
Mattia follows him out of the lecture hall without another word, walking maybe a bit too close to Riccardo for it to be accidental, and Riccardo realizes he doesn’t mind in the least.  
  
Well, except when Gigi catches his eye at the cafeteria and beams at him triumphantly.  
  
Riccardo pretends he didn’t see it.


End file.
